Report 806
Report #806 Skillset: Shamanism Skill: New Org: Hartstone Status: Completed Mar 2012 Furies' Decision: Solution 1. Problem: Though weather manipulation is a core part of the Shamanism skillset, the shaman is ill-equipped to make use of the meager effects generated via weather. Assuming that all of the unlocked skills are buffed to appropriate levels (as they all need some 'tweaking') so that hot and cold climates are on an equal field, cold is the more desirable climate extreme, with neutral climates being the least desirable. Cold weather can do periodic damage, freeze people, slow people, and hide the map. Hot temperatures can only slow people, though it sometimes can actually speed everyone up them up by the heat. The freezing ticks on cold damage appear to come once every 20 seconds, assuming that you do not have the proper level of warmth. This is very hard to capitalize on as there is no third person message. With the high power costs associated with changing the weather on any scale, these benefits are not adequate to carry a skillset. PLEASE NOTE THAT THE FIRST THREE COMMENTS WERE PRE-CHANGE. 0 R: 0 Solution #1: Introduce a new passive skill, FierceWeather. The controlled weather in a Shaman's demesne becomes stronger. Cold ticks are sped up on enemies and have a third person message for the Shaman. Blizzards (when appropriate) become opaque to weathersight (but not the artifact version) for enemies, Hailstones (when appropriate) do more damage to enemies. Hot climate hunger attrition expands to effect enemies who are over level 80. Hot climate also does periodic hits of slickness to enemies, at the same rate as the freeze ticks. Clothing should have a greatly reduced ability to mitigate these effects. 0 R: 0 Solution #2: In an expansion of possible attrition, have cold temperatures do slow sleep attrition. This should be on par with sleepmist, taking 3 minutes to bring someone from max alertness to falling asleep. Clothing would mitigate this. 0 R: 0 Solution #3: Have Weatherguard protect against or mitigate these enhanced effects. Consider having a Shaman's dissolve dissolve away Weatherguard. Player Comments: ---on 3/6 @ 01:30 writes: Solutions 2 and 3 aim to be a start to balancing hot climates against cold climates in terms of use to the druid. Removing lightning from hot climate only, giving hot climates a goal for the sapping druid, and revewing the abilities unlocked by both hot and cold climes (freeze, mudslick, snowman, frogs), I can see that we could make a viable choice of climate to use, that will dovetail nicely with the skill I suggested in report 764. ---on 3/12 @ 00:26 writes: I support this report. Power cost is strangely high - are you hoping to have all three put in together? And is there any advantage to using Lightning, over just cudgelling? ---on 3/12 @ 09:00 writes: I am hoping to have all three solutions approved. I may table this report, however, in favor of a 'fierceweather' report. In any event, I will probably change the third solution (in addition to explaining the problem more concicely). Lightning can be used from anywhere in the demesne to hit a target (for a small power cost). It is essentially a limited version of zap. ---on 3/12 @ 21:36 writes: I have changed this report, but will not delete the comments for form's sake. This report has much the same goal as my original report in this slot, trying to make it so that cold and hot climates take effect and are meaningful in Shaman combat. ---on 3/13 @ 20:43 writes: All solutions together are fine ---on 3/13 @ 21:27 writes: Also, I'd like to point out that as is, any weather setup is just as likely to hurt the shaman as help, as it enables enemy shaman's and all effects hit everyone (Even the shaman, to a lesser extent). ---on 3/14 @ 02:08 writes: Agree with Shuyin, I think all three are fine, though would honestly prefer spontaneous afflictions (more freeze, etc) as opposed to more attrition combat. Weather is non-discriminating. Perhaps would also be useful to introduce an ability for a Shaman to assess how bundled up a person is? ---on 3/14 @ 19:32 writes: Those are going to come later, but the idea is that because weather enables the Shaman's enemies just as much as it enables their allies in the Shaman's own demesne, the Shaman holding the demesne should have some additional edge. Buffs to active abilities will come later. ---on 3/22 @ 18:24 writes: I like the idea of making weather a larger part of Shaman Druid combat as opposed to just trances, but disagree, like Raeri, with adding sleep/hunger attrition to the melds. Passive chills or slickness as more afflictions is good. ---on 3/22 @ 22:20 writes: The problem is that these would have to come pretty quickly (at least every 10 seconds) and be timeable to be particularly useful, especially as they don't give a thirdperson message to alert the druid to the affliction being given. I was kind of uneasy about the sleep attrition myself, and would be okay without that as long as the other effects of cold are empowered as described. However, hunger attrition is ALREADY nominally part of hot climates, the only reason it dosn't come into play during combat is the quirky way it works. Because of this, and because (unlike sleep attrition, hunger attrition is completly avoidable with a little forethought) I think it's only reasonable to make the hunger attrition actually work in a limited fashion, in addition to some effect that makes hot climates more useful in general. Chills is somewhat useful for sap (assuming that you can hold them in sap long enough for it to progress to freezing and for the freezing to hit) and slickness somewhat more useful (though broken limbs do not hinder curing sap, and shamans have a limited ability to prone people, really requiring an active ability that takes longer than it does to recover from the stun and stand up, even in sap, which makes it much harder to captilize on a broken limb/slickness combo. With no way to activly command the slickness (besides beast spit), I think that adding heat hunger attrition and slickness as cold does freezing and slight damage and slowing to be a fair change, which is all in Solution 1. ---on 3/28 @ 06:45 writes: I don't see an issue with just adding extra tics on timer for chills/slickness/whateveraff inside the shaman's demesne on top of normal weather tics. It'd be their version of embedded runes/motes, the way I see it. ---on 3/28 @ 17:30 writes: Right, except that unlike runes and motes, there would be no element of choice or variety. I do think that increased normal tics of standard weather should be a part of a Shaman demesne, but disagree with the sentiment that increased (but still very slow, unwieldy, and hard to captilize on effectivly) natural weather tics should be the ONLY effect weather has. Weather is supposed to be potent, evidenced in all the flavour text and the (still) hefty costs to make the weather extreme. As weather stands now, it's at worst a very minor annoyance. That's fine for a passive world wide effect, not fine for the focus of a player skillset. ---on 3/29 @ 20:45 writes: Support Solution 1.